Josh Constine

Josh Constine is a technology journalist who specializes in deep analysis of social products. He is currently a Senior Writer for TechCrunch.

Previously, Constine was the Lead Writer of Inside Facebook, where he covered Facebook product changes, privacy, ads, ecommerce, games, and music technology.

Constine graduated from Stanford University in 2009 with a Master's degree in Cybersociology, examining the influence of technology on social interaction. He researched the impact of privacy controls on the socialization of children, meme popularity cycles, and what influences the click through rate of links posted to Twitter.

Constine also received a Bachelor of Arts degree with honors from Stanford University in 2007, with a concentration in Social Psychology & Interpersonal Processes.

Josh Constine is an experienced public speaker, and has done on-stage inteviews with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, AOL CEO Tim Armstrong, Dropbox CEO Drew Houston, SoundCloud CEO Alex Ljung, and Senator Cory Booker. He's been quoted by The Wall Street Journal, CNN Money, The Atlantic, BBC World Magazine, Slate, and more, plus has been featured on television on NBC and Fox News. Constine is available for speaking gigs.

[Disclosures: Josh Constine advises a college friend's social location-sharing startup codenamed 'Signal' that is based in San Francisco. This advising role has been cleared with AOL and TechCrunch's editors. Constine's cousin Darren Lachtman is the founder of Niche, which connects social media stars to sponsorships from brands.]

Latest from Josh Constine

35 million people run into a Facebook email and password login roadblock on iOS each day, and over half of them bounce. That’s why Facebook confirms to me that it’s testing a new tool that lets users log in to Facebook on Safari with one tap, rather than having to type in their credentials — which most don’t. It could ease frustrations for users while boosting… Read More

Drone manufacturing king DJI has a plot to expand its unmanned aerial empire. It’s teamed up with prestigious VC Accel to launch the $10 million SkyFund, which invests in companies expanding the drone market — and DJI’s sizable slice of it. Today SkyFund revealed to me that its first investment goes to DroneBase, which lets any business rent a drone and pilot. Read More

Facebook today detailed plans for its solar-powered, laser-connected, Internet-beaming Aquila drones, but confirmed it’s not going to compete with Internet Service Providers. “Our intention is not to be an operator” Facebook’s VP of engineering Jay Parikh told an assembly of reporters. “We’re not going to be ‘Facebook ISP.'” Read More

The latest perk of working at Facebook: getting to play the new Nintendo game Super Mario Maker a month before it comes out. Yesterday, Facebook hosted a hackathon where 100 employees built their own levels using Mario Maker.
The game lets you make your own obstacle courses for the plumber using elements from Mario 1, 3, and Super Mario World. Teams competed for whose level was best. We… Read More

With 700 million Messenger users, investors are eager to see Facebook earn money on the platform. But Zuckerberg put the brakes on those expectations today during the Q2 earnings call, explaining that Messenger and WhatsApp will run the same monetization playbook as Facebook and the News Feed: Get people organically interacting with businesses before you let companies pay to reach… Read More

Mark Zuckerberg says Facebook Events has hit global scale with 450 million active users, while noting that Groups now has 850 million. Facebook hasn’t shared a user count for Events in a long time, if ever. Read More

People aren’t using Facebook less, according to its new earnings report. Facebook recovered from last quarter’s miss, beating the street’s estimates in Q2 2015 with $4.04 billion in revenue and $0.50 earnings per share. Facebook now has 1.49 billion monthly users, up 3.47 percent quarter over quarter, which was a bit slower than Q1’s 3.6 percent growth. Read More

The idea of Apple Music struck fear in the hearts of listeners like me. The company had enough money to buy exclusives that could fracture and balkanize the world’s music catalog. The problem with exclusives on services like Tidal or Spotify is that only the tiny percentage of people who pay for their subscriptions can hear these songs when they want. It could have been the same… Read More

Pay-Per-Virtual Reality could become a thing thanks to AltspaceVR. The VR chat room and communication platform just raised $10.3 million to give us a digital place where we can hang out.
But with this funding, which brings AltspaceVR to $15.7 million, comes a need to devise a business plan. While AltspaceVR is focused on growth now, its co-founder and CEO Eric Romo tells me it could… Read More

If a city knows what intersections are full of smog, it could add trees or change stop light schedules to improve the air its citizens breathe. Google Earth’s Outreach program that equips nonprofits and public-benefit organizations with data wants to give the world these insights.
So today, Google revealed that it’s been working with SF startup Aclima for the last year-and-a-half… Read More

The annoyance of going to the doctor keeps tons of people from finding out if they need glasses or updating their prescription. But it turns out you don’t need one of those giant multi-lens machines to do an eye exam. Opternative has passed its clinical trials and today launched its $40 online eye exam.
All you need is a computer, smartphone, Wi-Fi and 25 minutes to take its test… Read More

Got a startup idea? That and some cash is all you need to get a fully functional app built for you by Gigster. Launching today, Gigster is a full-service development shop, rather than a marketplace where you have to manage the talent you find.
Just go to Gigster’s site, instant message with a sales engineer, tell them what you want built, and in 10 minutes you get a guaranteed quote for… Read More

Less than a month after the launch of streaming service Apple Music, Apple’s CEO Tim Cook announced that “Millions and millions of customers are already experiencing Apple Music and the number is growing substantially every day” as part of today’s poorly-received Q3 earnings report. The question will be how many users continue to pay once their free trials expire and… Read More

Somewhere between texting and video chat, the mobile phone stopped being a phone. But there’s a special intimacy unique to simply talking to someone, and early YouTuber Brent Hurley wants to bring it back with SayMore. His new app lets you browse pre-made discussion topics, preview the profile of a conversation partner, and start a free VOIP call with them. You know, so you can just… Read More

Knowing what to play next is the biggest problem with streaming music services, but most solve discovery with clunky, unfamiliar blog-style tabs you’re supposed to browse. Listeners are accustomed to playlists, so Spotify’s latest attempt to unlock its catalog is an algorithmically personalized playlist called “Discover Weekly”. Users will start seeing it soon, and you… Read More

Reddit is taking a firm stance against bullying, harassment, and content that encourages violence, and will hide the worst content from its site. Today new CEO Steve Huffman announced a new slate of moderation policies and is now holding an AMA to discuss them, which is important considering they’re rather vague to begin with.
What’s new is the NSFW tag, which stands for… Read More

Depending on your perspective, Reddit’s either in a pickle — or it’s a billowing garbage fire. Leave the most horrible content up and it will continue to facilitate hatred while seeing bad press, spooked advertisers, and disgusted users fleeing the site. Ban it and move away from the free speech many thought Reddit stood for, and it could see an exodus of hardcore users and… Read More

Fifty-one percent of concert goers buy tickets to shows of artists they discovered through streaming, according to a new study by EventBrite. And while the average money spent per person on CDs and MP3s has fallen 48 percent from $35 in 2008 to $18 in 2014, spending on live music grew 65 percent from $29 to $48. Read More

“This on-demand, or so-called ‘gig economy’, is creating exciting opportunities and unleashing innovation. But it’s also raising hard questions about workplace protections and what a good job will look like in the future” Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said in a speech today outlining her economic policy. You can rewatch the talk on C-Span here.
Clinton… Read More